There has been proposed a music game system using a musical adaptation game apparatus designed to adapt for a piece of music, such as adaptation to a rhythm pattern, as disclosed in the following Patent Publication 1. This music game system is intended to allow each of plural persons to play the game in a different part of musical instruments. The music game system comprises first and second musical adaptation game apparatuses which are connected to each other through a communication section for transferring information about the progress of musical rendition. The communication section includes an information transmitting section provided in the first musical adaptation game apparatus, and an information receiving section provided in the second musical adaptation game apparatus.
Based on the above configuration, the music-rendition progress information is transferred between the first and second musical adaptation game apparatuses to allow the adaptation to be manually operated from respective adaptation operation sections of the first and second musical adaptation game apparatuses while synchronizing the game apparatuses with each other, so that each of the persons can play the game in a manner close to an actual music rendition, e.g., by manually operating each of the adaptation operation sections in his/her part.
In the music game system disclosed in the Patent Publication 1, it is necessary to have a scheme capable of configuring master/slave control means for assigning one of the game apparatuses undergoing an earlier input of a coin, to a master game apparatus, and assigning the other game apparatus undergoing a later input of a coin, to a slave game apparatus. Thus, the game apparatus has a problem about complexity in configuration, addition of a master processing required for the master game apparatus, and increase in volume of information to be transmitted from the master game apparatus.
In view of the above problem, it is an object of the present invention to provide a competition game system capable of efficiently achieving a competition game while exchanging minimum data between a plurality of game apparatuses having the same configuration, without setting a master-servant relationship to the game apparatuses, and to provide a game apparatus for use in the competition game system.
Patent Publication 1: JP 2000-237454A